Category: Viral

For someone who goes on Twitter so much, Kanye West isn’t very adept at using it. Setting aside the irrational nature of the majority of his tweets — which in the last week have included sharing old videos of young Drake and hunting down “fake employees” — the man flat-out does not understand the capabilities of the social platform.

While he’s been embroiled in a days-long rant against the recording industry, he apparently wanted to crowdsource some research into his contract, attempting to upload it as a .pdf file. The problem is, Twitter doesn’t actually support .pdf file reading and furthermore, it appears he tried to “upload” the thing by copying and pasting the filename as a tweet, resulting in nothing more than a tweet with the file name. He deleted it, but here’s the Slack capture, because this is as hilarious as it is baffling.

When the initial tweet wound up not working — of course — Kanye instead vowed to tweet “page by page,” explaining somewhat redundantly that “the PDF is not loading on Twitter.” Given his lack of proficiency with an app designed to be used by 12-year-olds, it might be a while before he figures out how to pull photo files from Adobe Acrobat or whatever program he uses to read .pdfs.

Let’s all just hope that he gets so tied up with doing that, he forgets to tweet for a bit because we could all use a break from Kanye’s Twitter feed — Kanye most of all.

Update: It looks like Kanye figured out a workaround and it’s… well… it’s almost worst than the filename tweet.

Three years ago, Tom Mullen — founder of the Washed Up Emo blog and podcast of the same name — released a book. It was called Anthology Of Emo Volume 1, and featured chapters on The Promise Ring, Dashboard Confessional, Texas Is The Reason, The Get Up Kids, American Football, Mineral, Knapsack, and Rainer Maria, bands from a time and place that Mullen calls “the pre-Bleed American, and also pre-internet era — that moment where you go to a show and you don’t know what [the band] looks like.”

For the second installment of Anthology Of Emo, Mullen looks to cross the line into the 2000’s with chapters on bands like Jimmy Eat World, Braid, Foxing, Saves The Day, and more. While the book itself isn’t out until later this month, we’re happy to share an exclusive excerpt from a 2013 interview with Saves The Day’s Chris Conley, which finds Conley recalling the formation of his band, and the music that inspired him in the first place. Check it out below.

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Conley: I think Led Zeppelin was the band that really sparked my own inner need to play music, because… in the classical stuff, I’m playing other people’s music. I think I wanted to make my own. [Led Zeppelin] were using a lot of those classical chords and modes that my brain, my subconscious, was just familiar with. It wasn’t like I was listening to other classic rock bands, like Lynyrd Skynyrd or something. That stuff I just don’t like. It just doesn’t do anything for me. The two classic rock bands that really really blew my mind when I was a kid [were] Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, actually. The ’70s records of Aerosmith are phenomenal, and what I notice from them now is all that classical music in those records.

I mean, Steven Tyler grew up underneath his dad’s piano listening to these incredible compositions. So, that pulled me into rock. Once I was into rock music, then I started listening to other bands with loud guitars. And I really didn’t like anything. There was very little that grabbed me, but I remember feeling at this point in my life, like “Why isn’t there more cool guitar music?” And I felt like it must have been six months later, Nirvana came on the scene, and Nirvana… changed everything. That was the moment where I became more interested in this music that was under the radar, because Nirvana came out and no one else sounded like it.

So, of course, I’m trying to find more stuff that sounds like it, but the stuff that I can find is at my local record store where somebody is saying, “hey, check out Shudder to Think,” or “hey, check out Archers of Loaf or Jawbox.” So I started getting into indie rock, or the really heavy indie music, through Nirvana. Then, I got into that show 120 Minutes, which was just a miracle that existed at that time. I was up one night before school. I was up late watching these videos, and the video for “Seven” by Sunny Day Real Estate came on, and—oh my gosh, I have goosebumps right now. That was a game changer… I lived across the street from this mall where they had a Sam Goody. And I walked over there and bought Diary.

And that was the beginning of a big musical journey into the heart of indie music. You know, Nirvana, and that kind of stuff, was the mainstream—oh, and Smashing Pumpkins, you know, Stone Temple Pilots. All that stuff was so so good. But Sunny Day was my link to the underground, the real current under the surface. It’s through Sunny Day, I started finding other friends that liked that kind of music. And then they’d say, “hey, have you heard this band Jawbreaker?” you know, or “have you heard of the Swirlies?” You know, stuff like that. And I just kind of went on the journey.

I just follow my ears, really. I just get really excited and just follow them, never thinking, “Oh…This is a cool record. This is what people like.” I just like my own stuff. So, that was how I got, eventually, into punk rock, was through Sunny Day—then into Jawbreaker. And then, once I found Jawbreaker, it was over.

Mullen: It totally makes sense. Even hearing your records… it’s like you can hear the Sunny Day. You can hear the indie, but you can hear the heaviness…

Conley: Yeah, Jawbox, too.

Mullen: You listening to all those bands, that makes total sense.

Conley: I still feel, in my songs today, I still feel Jeremy Enigk, and I feel Blake Schwarzenbach all over it. It’s nice to still feel connected to that music that was so inspiring when I was younger. I mean, I literally wore out Diary. The CD was just completely scratched, and I carried the booklet around with me at school, you know? Like, I would read the lyrics. In 10th grade, we had to do a book report of poetry, and I chose the lyrics from 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. And it worked! My teacher was like, “This is really great stuff. Good report, Chris.”

Mullen: [Laughs] I love that. Well, it’s interesting. I mean, did you get involved with the scene in New Jersey? Or were you more sort of playing records and listening to bands kind of on your own, watching TV? Or… Did you start getting involved in the local scene as well?

Conley: It’s funny. I feel like I’m pretty oblivious. I’m sort of in my own world, and I don’t notice a lot of stuff that’s going on outside. So, it’s a miracle that I got anywhere. Honestly, I should still be in a basement somewhere listening to records. But how this all happened was that one of my friends from school, who also liked that sort of underground music, was Bryan Newman, who was the original drummer for Saves The Day. Well, Bryan was pretty ambitious, and he really liked hardcore music.

So, in 7th grade—this was before I even played guitar, I was still in orchestra—Bryan joined a hardcore band in Trenton, New Jersey called Nation In Transit. He would come back the next day after practice and have all these stories about how they are playing all these songs and rehearsing these songs to make a tape. It was so cool to hear about that, but I didn’t play guitar yet. So, the next year, I had started playing guitar, and Bryan said, “Hey why don’t you come over and play with me?” I went over there. We had a blast. We put a blank tape in a cassette player and just recorded the entire jam, and it sounded like Rage Against The Machine.

It was all riffs and half time and stuff. It was just so much fun. And it was just like my best friends were there waiting for me. And that’s how it all started. Then I would write songs, because I’ve always really loved just kind of messing around and finding little cool chord changes or putting little ideas together, you know –on a piano or something. I just love doing that. And so Bryan, and a few other people, just sort of gravitated around that and noticed that I was writing these kind of cool songs. And they said, “We should get a singer and a bass player, and we should go play shows. These are cool. We should make a tape. We should go and record something.”

I never ever in a million years would have thought to even ask someone to be in a band. It wouldn’t have happened. So this is all Bryan Newman. And then once Bryan got us interested, we booked time at a studio, and we made a tape. This is in ninth grade. We made a tape, and it was just so much fun. And ever since then, I just continued to write songs, looking forward to eventually recording them as a group of songs… We started playing in people’s backyards or their basements. Somebody would have a party, and we’d say, “Hey, can we play?” So we started playing all over. You know, just friends from school or some other school in town. Then, the years went by.

We made a 7-inch in our sophomore year of school, and then by junior year, we had gone through a few changes, gone through a few band names, and we were about to record another demo tape. We just felt like it was time to have a name-change, and our buddy came to the studio when we were going to record a bunch of songs. He was just going to hang out for the day. This is Sean McGrath, who, at the time, was in a band called Hands Tied. And we got to know Sean through going to see Mouthpiece at the Princeton Arts Council when we were kids. He came along. He was listening to us play, and he thought, “Hey, this is actually pretty cool. Seriously, you guys could play these hardcore shows that are going on in New Brunswick. I mean, it’s good stuff… I think a cool name for your group would be Saves The Day.”

We were sitting in the studio, Trax East, South River, New Jersey. This is April 17, 1997. We went in and spent one day making the demo. That day, we went home, and we decided that we liked the name Saves the Day. Sean told us it came from his favorite Farside song, which was called “Hero” — the SoCal punk band Farside. I guess there’s a lyric that says, “I wanna be the one who saves the day,” and it stuck. We loved the name. We made the tape. We started playing these hardcore shows. The first show we ever played as Saves The Day — this is hilarious. We played Rutgers University opening for MC Lyte.

Mullen: Yes!

Conley: Because Sean had a friend that was putting on the day’s music. As we played in this indoor facility with bounce houses. It was like a fair, basically… Sean was really cool. He had all these friends, you know, that put on shows. So, later that day…he’s like “Hey, my friends in Ignite are playing this show near New Brunswick. We should go down and just see if we can hop on their equipment and play a few of these songs.” I was like, “Alright!” I didn’t know anything, you know.

So we go down there, and it is a packed show. I mean, Ignite was just so so awesome and put on incredible shows. People were all about it at the time. And they’re the nicest dudes ever. Like, just the nicest dudes ever. So, sure enough, they let us get on their equipment before they even played. And we played like five songs from our demo. The guitars are horribly out of tune. Everyone’s, like, looking at us strangely. And that was the first day of Saves The Day’s live performing history.

Anthology Of Emo Vol. 2 is out this month. Pre-order here.

For decades, Darren Star has brought us soapy TV escapism (Younger, Melrose Place, Sex and the City), and he’s getting into the streaming game now. Star’s new Netflix show, Emily In Paris, will arrive in October and star Lily Collins as Emily, who is (in fact) in Paris. The trailer previews the romantic comedy series that looks like it’ll really hit the spot when Americans can’t exactly fly away to France for play (and even for work in most cases), so yes, it’s a good thing that this show is arriving soon. I was actually daydreaming about France while browsing travel websites last night.

There’s a lot of comfort-content on display here. Emily’s not-so-charmingly dancing around her inability to speak French upon arrival, and there are handsome Frenchmen dashing about throughout the series, yet work feels a little bit toxic. Her boss, played by Kate Walsh (The Umbrella Academy fans know her as The Handler), only adds to the friction on a personal note, but hey, Emily’s got the sights of the City of Lights to help her feel things out. From the synopsis:

Lily Collins stars as Emily, an ambitious twenty-something marketing executive from Chicago, unexpectedly lands her dream job in Paris when her company acquires a French luxury marketing company — and she is tasked with revamping their social media strategy. Emily’s new life in Paris is filled with intoxicating adventures and surprising challenges as she juggles winning over her work colleagues, making friends, and navigating new romances.

Emily In Paris (which co-stars Ashley Park, Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, Lucas Bravo, Samuel Arnold, Camille Razat, and Bruno Gouery) debuts on October 2.

“Mr. Lonely” helped make Bobby Vinton one of the biggest stars of the ’60s, and the single has been covered countless times since then. Now Angel Olsen has offered her take of the track, alongside composer Emile Mosseri, as part of the soundtrack of Kajillionaire, a Miranda July film that drops this month. Olsen and Mosseri’s rendition plays up the tender elements of the song, with Olsen’s mostly-hushed vocals gliding across Mosseri’s lush instrumentation.

When discussing the film’s music, July and Mosseri both expressed interest in getting Olsen involved. Mosseri said, “At Sundance, when Miranda and I started talking about making a version of ‘Mr. Lonely’ for the album, Angel’s name was at the top of the list. We got lucky! She happened to be in LA for a week right before the pandemic hit. We built a version of the song out of the fabric of the score, and Angel came by and sang it so beautifully. It was a truly magical day.”

Olsen says she was immediately interested in collaborating with them: “Suddenly there she was. THE MIRANDA JULY. In my text messages. She was working on songs with Emile for the upcoming film Kajillionaire, which at the time I knew nothing about. I just so happened to be in Los Angeles. So I met with them both, and we talked about cadence and we talked about life and we talked about the film. And Miranda directed me to sing the cover in the way she and Emile thought it would represent the feelings behind the film. It was a lovely experience.”

Listen to Olsen and Mosseri’s “Mr. Lonely” cover above.

The world’s best whisky for 2021 was named today. Okay, that’s a heady sentence in the wide world of whisk(e)y, but, we’re talking about the iconic and much-respected Jim Murray and his Whisky Bible 2021, which dropped this morning. So, what is the best whisky in the world, according to the master?

Drum roll… Alberta Premium Cask Strength! Yes, a Canadian rye was named the best whisky in the world. And, you know what, we can’t argue. We actually called out an Alberta Premium Rye bottle earlier this year as one of our favorites. The stuff it legit. Also, if you’ve drunk rye from an American blender — like WhistlePig — then you’ve drunk the good stuff from Alberta Distillers.

Alberta Premium Cask Strength has a mash bill of malted and unmalted rye, is aged in Alberta Distillery’s wintry warehouses, and then goes into the bottle uncut at a whopping 65.1 percent ABV. It’s gonna have some kick, making it a great cocktail base for those wintry Manhattans and nogs. Overall, Murray gave the juice a score of 97.5 out of 100.

Right now, the bottle is retailing in Canada for around $60 ($45 USD) a bottle. Expect that to change immediately. The last time Murray named a Canadian whisky his “world’s best” (Crown Royal’s Northern Harvest Rye) fights broke out in Canadian liquor stores over the last bottles.

Since Alberta Premium is a Beam Suntory shingle, expect to see these bottles to start popping up a little more regularly stateside soon. Just don’t expect it to be cheap.

With the premiere of Fargo season four, which is as “weird and menacing” as ever, less than two weeks away, star Chris Rock is making the publicity rounds. Which is good news, because Chris Rock stories tend to be good stories. For instance, in an interview with the New York Times, he talked about how he was supposed to play Jimmy Olsen to Nicolas Cage’s Man of Steel in Tim Burton’s never-made Superman movie, and how stoked he was to be “hanging out with the guy that made Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and he’s showing me the models of the sets for Superman.” Rock also discussed the time he, Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, and Prince got, well, c*ckblocked by Donald Trump.

“I remember Eddie, Arsenio, Prince, and me at a club one night,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, “and Donald Trump walks in and all these girls just start running to that side of the room because a f*cking 6-foot-whatever blond billionaire with his name on all the buildings walks in — like if that room was a seesaw, we’d be in the air.” This is like the sleazy, presumably New York City-set version of that One Night in Miami movie:

Years later, Rock would find himself in Brian Grazer’s office in Los Angeles, as Murphy pitched a heist flick — a kind of Black Ocean’s Eleven, starring him, Rock, Chappelle, Chris Tucker, and a few others — about a gang that robs Trump Tower. Murphy envisioned Trump as the movie’s villain. “Like Alan Rickman in Die Hard,” says Rock. What happened from there is another classic Hollywood story: The movie became Tower Heist, directed by Brett Ratner, starring Ben Stiller with Murphy and “a bunch of white people.”

In that same interview, Rock also teased two upcoming film projects: one that he described as “Bad Lieutenant, starring an insane actress,” and another that will pair him with Dave Chappelle and Adam Sandler. No word on Grown Ups 3.

Fargo premieres on September 27.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Way back in March, Jared Leto emerged from the desert (following a silent meditation retreat) and was stunned to learn about the pandemic. From there, it seems that he’s hit the weights and hasn’t stopped. He’s also been rock climbing and accepting the lead role in Tron 3, which is probably the least info-filled tidbit in this whole post. Disney’s been rolling that sequel around for awhile, and the casting news arrives three years after Leto was rumored to be playing a piece of sentient software (or something).

Well, there’s not too much clarity on the movie’s plan (Daft Punk might be doing the score), even from Variety, which reports that the threequel will “chart its own path” while not being a direct sequel. Hmm, nebulous. However, it’s clear that if Leto is truly playing sentient software, it’s going to arrive with a jacked physique.

Leto shared a mirror-selfie to that effect. His arms are already making gains, but his caption indicates that he’s “[s]tarting the Tron workout.” He added, “[J]oin me?””

If he’s only “starting” the movie-specific workout now, god only knows how ripped he plans to get for the role, but hey, Leto is not opposed to body tranformations. He lost a lot of weight for Dallas Buyers Club after gaining a lot to play John Lennon’s assassin in Chapter 27. In contrast, Tron 3 should be a much healthier process all around.

Travis Scott — one of the most popular rappers — and McDonald’s — one of the most popular restaurants — are in the midst of a collaborative promotion, and it’s going very well. In fact, McDonald’s is having a hard time keeping the Travis Scott Meal in stock. It’s so much of an issue that restaurants are running out of ingredients, and the company has deemed it necessary to change how customers have to order the meal.

USA Today obtained a memo “sent to employees, owners, and operators across the country,” and it notes that the promotion will continue as originally planned (through October 4), but beginning on September 22, the $6 meal will only be available to order through the McDonald’s app.

The memo reads in part, “We’ve created a program that’s so compelling to our customers that it’s stretching our world-class supply chain; and if demand continues at these levels, more restaurants will break supply.” In a statement provided to the publication, McDonald’s, confirming the details outlined in the memo, added, “In fact, it’s been so lit, some of our restaurants have temporarily sold out of some of the ingredients in the meal. We’re working closely with our suppliers, distributors and franchisees to resupply impacted restaurants as quickly as possible.”

The document also notes how creatively customers have been ordering the meal. Apart from saying that Cactus Jack “sent them,” as promotional materials have suggested, customers have also said things like, “It’s lit, Sicko Mode,” “The Fornite guy burger,” and, “You know why I am here,” oftentimes while they are playing Scott’s music.

McDonald’s also noted that “more surprises from Cactus Jack coming soon,” but it remains to be seen how they’ll top the giant McNugget pillow.

During a Hispanic Heritage Month event in Kissimmee, Florida on Tuesday night, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden busted out his phone and played “Despacito.” It was an extremely “how do you do, fellow kids?” moment, although to be fair, singer Luis Fonsi was the one who introduced Biden. After playing a short clip of the Hot 100 mega-hit, the former-vice president cracked, “I tell you what, if I had the talent of any one of these people, I’d be elected president by acclamation.”

The actual president, the one who blamed Biden for not instituting a mask mandate even though he has no power to do that because he’s not the president, never heard the “Despacito” clip. Or maybe he chose to willfully ignore it. But he did share a doctored video of his rival supposedly playing N.W.A’s classic “Fuck tha Police.” It was an obvious fake, but that’s never stopped Donald Trump from sharing it with his followers before.

Twitter slapped the “Manipulated Media” tag on the tweet; if you click on it, you’re shown the real story with the factual headline. Following the event, Fonsi tweeted, “It was a real honor for me to introduce vice president Joe Biden tonight. A great leader who has shown his support and admiration for the Latin community and Puerto Rico for many years. It’s time for us to have a president who treats us with the dignity we deserve.”

Meanwhile, instead of acknowledging Trump’s sliminess, former-N.W.A member Ice Cube is mostly tweeting about the Los Angeles Clippers blowing a 3-1 lead.

A better use of his time, honestly.

(Via Newsweek)

John Oliver’s reactions to good news (like Last Week Tonight‘s multi-year renewal) are often as notable than the news itself. So, it’s worth paying attention to his statement after the HBO show won a fifth consecutive writing award during Tuesday night’s Creative Arts Emmys. Obviously, it’s been a difficult year for every human with particularly challenging material for writers to tackle. Not only has there been you-know-what to deal with, along with clearing the air on police brutality protests, but of course, there’s been that ongoing feud with the Elmo-outraged (and always controversial) Tucker Carlson. In other words, Oliver’s writers at HBO have been getting it done, and he’s thrilled.

Last Week Tonight defeated CBS Late Show with Stephen Colbert, TBS’ Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers for this honor. While accepting the award, Oliver also wanted to recognize the Emmys for not making everyone show up in person (because obviously). After all, it’s not as though everyone could be placed in a bubble (like the NBA) two weeks ahead of the ceremony:

“I’d like to thank my writers, obviously, who work incredibly hard all year round and this year has been particularly challenging. I’d like to thank the Emmys for not holding the Emmys in person this year because of the, you know, thing. Thank you, we will cherish it forever.”

Congrats to Oliver and Friends on this reward for all their hard work. Meanwhile, the Emmys are going fully virtual for Sunday’s Jimmy Kimmel-hosted ceremony as well. Tune in for our coverage of the ABC ceremony starting at 8:00pm EST.

(Via Deadline)